“Ladies,” he said as he passed them.
They were constructing a sandcastle, all four of them pouring buckets of sandy water to smooth over surfaces. They had built turrets and windows and a ramp as well as an archway entrance, that would all dissolve in the oncoming surf later on in the evening.
He removed his zoris and walked toward the ocean. The water was lukewarm, not freezing cold as it would have been up north, and not like how he remembered the water in Santa Cruz that disastrous summer when he brought the wife and girls. Maybe it was the close proximity to the three females in his little clan, but Santa Cruz didn’t do anything for his psyche. The wind was too cold and so was the water. The smell of cotton candy from the Boardwalk made him want to vomit and remnants of it stuck to his pages, to the fingers, to the keys and the bottoms of his shoes. Using the bathroom was problematic so he frequently had to water the ice plant with his own urine. He decided right then and there that Florida would be the only place in the universe he’d be able to write. And he needed to be alone. Complete peace and quiet. Just he and Captain Sampson and Mega Blue.
Except for this time. For a whole month, he’d been unable to write, to even get more than ten pages typed up that he didn’t toss as reading like one of his students.
The first week he was here, he felt this creeping sense of dread overtaking him, like the black plague infecting his fingers and his face and his brain, making him scramble his ideas and unable to put one word in front of the other without making no sense whatsoever. Everything he wrote was awful. It was third grade style. It was what he would tease his other author friends having read someone else’s manuscript. Amateurish. Not at all like Hank Borges, the famous science fiction author, would do.
But the ocean didn’t see this. The ocean treated him just like any other person who stood up to his white knees in the surf. The sun was right smack in the middle of his forehead, his sunglasses barely able to keep out the glare, the floppy hat not helping. He turned to the side so he wouldn’t damage his eyes. Apparently, he would need a different pair. These he’d picked up at the beach store. And it was obvious they were only worth the dollar that he paid for them.
The three girls ran over into the surf splashed water on each other and laughed, getting the sand off their legs, their arms, their shoulders, and trying to see who could put the most water on their friends. Their total lack of common sense was thrilling to him. He liked watching them. They laughed freely throwing their heads back, screaming when the water was tossed in their faces, slipping, sitting in the water, kicking, splashing water with their toes, doing everything that a three-year-old might do, except they were in their early twenties. And they were so attractive, Hank felt like asking them what their secret was—if they swallowed some elixir, if perhaps just because of their youth, they had discovered the source of happiness.
Was it that he was unhappy? Was he unhappy because his wife didn’t want to have anything to do with him? His girls seemed more preoccupied with things at school than things daddy would talk to them about, except when he brought them lavish gifts? Was it that he had turned that terrible four-oh plus age and thought perhaps not only his writing career could be over but his desire and need for romance might be gone as well? Maybe his dick was all shriveled up too from lack of use. His few further attempts at dating were shameful and embarrassing. He had a performance issue in the bedroom, something he’d never experienced before.
Just like my writing, he thought.
Hank felt the splash of water on his side and whipped around to object. The young woman in front of him gave him a wide smile, her pink lipstick an attractive distraction against her peachy skin. She had Latin coloring, as if she was Italian or Cuban or South American, perhaps Brazilian. His mind wandered to all kinds of exotic places as he stared at her dripping wet, her wide smile and sparkling deep brown eyes with her long ponytail wet and dripping. Crystalline drops of water hung from her ear lobes. She was breathing heavy. Her ample chest made it impossible for him not to come alive as a man even though he’d kind of pictured himself as an old lady with the floppy hat and the pink skin from his lack of sunshine. She clearly was ten times healthier than he was. Who was he to tell her not to splash him, he thought?
“I’m sorry. That was an accident.”
He didn’t believe a word she said, but he was charmed by her attitude anyway so decided to play along.
“It’s quite all right, miss, I think I deserved it a bit.” She angled her head and looked at him scrunching up her eyebrows and the top of her nose. “Why do you say that?”
“Because my dear, I’m working on a book, and it’s not happening. I’m frustrated, and you guys looked like you were having so much fun, I decided maybe I’d indulge a little bit in your energies. So here I am, ready to receive the ocean and all your laughter and smiles and playful attitudes. I need something right now. This book is never going to get written unless I do shift something.”
“Then you should dunk. You definitely should dunk,” said the young black woman. With her hands on her hips tapping her toe on the wet sand creating a puddle beneath the ball. Her frown was mischievous but serious.
“Dunking’s just the best,” said the red head.
He was enjoying feeling ganged up on. It was exactly what he deserved. He’d been such a worm, a white fleshy flabby worm sitting in that living room trying to write a ridiculous space drama with a little bit of romance added in. The romance was definitely not happening in the book, but even the plot was eluding him, and he had a structured list taped to the wall showing chapter by chapter what he should write. Problem was, it was like he was required to write in Russian or Spanish or something, because he had no clue how to structure his English sentences so that they made sense even to himself.
The brunette with the brownie-colored eyes stuck out her lower lip and gave him an empathetic look. “It’s not really that bad, is it?”
“Oh, it is. It definitely is.” He turned to face the ocean as if willing to take it all on. The entire Gulf of Mexico and whatever else through the seas, all the sharks, the fish, the shells, everything, he’d take it all. He deserved an avalanche of saltwater. He deserved to be dragged out to sea and drowned like a dead fish.
“I’m a mess.” He chanced a quick glance to his right to see her looking at him with one eye squinted. “Don’t you think?”
“I think you’re right. You’re one of those men that my mother said never to spend any time with. Not as a teacher, not as a camp counselor, and certainly not as a stranger on the beach. But I’m so sorry you’re going through all this. I have no idea what you really mean. And like Estelle said, if you run out of options, I’d just jump in the water and get wet and then go right back up to the house and do whatever it is that you need to do and put one finger in front of the other and put together your work. That’s what I would do anyway. And if that doesn’t work, well, you could always slit your wrists.”
It was shocking that she would even consider saying something like this to him, a complete stranger. What if he was teetering on the edge of suicide? It showed a total lack of understanding of the ways of the world. People were fragile. Especially people in New York were fragile. And when they were running away to the Florida beach, well, they were definitely, looking for a change.
He watched her backside bounce deliciously along with the screams and giggles of the other two friends. They ran down the beach several houses and then up through a beach access ramp and he lost them into the parking lot or the sea of houses beyond. None of them even turned around to wave good-bye.
It had been a delightful encounter. Maybe she was right. He looked at the ocean, sat and watched as the water came up to within a foot of his toes. He got up, scrambling to his feet, and walked into the water up to his knees. He sat down and inhaled squealing to himself as the water covered his lower torso and then splashed up his chest getting the right side of his face wet and soaking his backside. He took one more wave, and then got u
p, and searched for his zoris, repositioned his hat, and ran toward his back patio. He grabbed a towel overhanging one of the chairs, dusted off, left his zoris outside to dry as well as the towel, opened the sliding glass door, and closed it behind him.
He walked around the table to stare at the blue IBM Selectric typewriter that grinned up at him, the keyboard forming gray teeth. He imagined hearing the machine chuckling at him, taunting him, daring him to just try to get a story out of that beast of a machine. He turned the little toggle switch to on, heard it buzz as the little ball in the center of the machine whirred to life, twisting itself quickly and then settling down. The tick, tick, tick of the machine continued. He sat gently in his wet trunks, dried his hands on his chest and then started to write.
‘It was the summer that would change his life forever. Just one trip to the green waters and yellow beaches of Scion, the mythical healing beach on the fourth planet of the Recovery Galaxy. He knew that all the energy he received from the ocean would help restore his wounds and make the upcoming battle his to own. He was conqueror of the worlds of Scion. But he’d been ousted.
Now was his chance to come back, with revenge, and this time, he’d win the war.’
Hank re-read his words and liked them. He’d found his mark, his place on the stage, and now he felt the words would flow.
Her name was Carmen, and Hank got so that if he didn’t see her playing on the beach, the day was somehow less brilliant. The words were flowing from his fingertips, and he often rehearsed some of the chapters in his mind as he walked the beach. But he always looked for Carmen. He was planning to stay at the house on Sunset until the 1st of February, or until he finished the book. The girls were going back to college after New Year’s.
The girls bought him a small Christmas tree and decorated it with shells.
As the days went by, Carmen had decided to not go back to school with her other two friends and remained at the house five doors up from his, taking a job at one of the local coffee shops. She’d explained to him that she needed a break from school, that her parents were divorcing, and money was tight, so she wanted to stay away from the family, earn her own, let the beach heal her insides and just give the family thing a rest. He felt sorry for her. But he was secretly glad to have the company. Talking to her was good for his daily word count.
“Going through a divorce is difficult. But in the long run, it’s better to be with someone you love than to just stay together for the sake of not saying that you failed at marriage. People don’t like to get divorced because it does feel like failure.” His advice over coffee one day didn’t seem to faze Carmen.
“Well in their case, my brother and I felt they should get divorced a long time ago. But of course, they didn’t see that.”
“Give them time, your parents are going to need you. It’s always wonderful when your kids appreciate you, no matter what kinds of stupid mistakes you’ve made.”
“So, you’ve been divorced and made mistakes?”
“Does God brush his teeth?”
“Big mistakes or little mistakes?”
“Every kind of mistake there is to make. And then a few more. And I’m just entering the divorce phase of my life. I think it’s a rite of passage or something.”
“You don’t seem like that kind of a man.”
“I don’t know what kind of man I am. But I’ll be very poor if I don’t finish this book.”
He liked talking to her in the afternoons and a couple of times they talked long into the sunset. He never got tired of watching the orange and purple sky, the way the sun melted into the horizon. Everyone along the beach came out to watch. Some dressed in their colorful bell bottoms and halter tops, others in their cutoffs and still other people walked out in slacks and shirts removing their lace up shoes and socks, not really prepared for the beach. Those were all Miami Vice times. It took all types. But the beach was a leveler, some common ground where everybody performed their little drama, in front of the sun, the sky, the wind, the birds and everybody else. And the truth was, nobody really cared.
As the weeks went by eventually Hank asked Carmen if he could buy her dinner and she turned him down. But she did agree to have lunch with him on one or two occasions, until finally she relented and agreed to let him take her out to a fancy seafood restaurant. Hank told himself it wasn’t a date because she was twenty years younger than he was. And he was fairly sure Carmen didn’t view him as boyfriend-type material. He just liked the way he felt around her, and he liked the innocent way she looked up at him. She laughed at his jokes even though he’d told them thousands of times before. But unlike his former wife and his two daughters, she found him funny and fascinating and didn’t neglect to tell him so often.
There came a time when the talk got slightly more serious, he was able to ask her about her family, and about her growing up. And he was struck with how strong she was, being raised in a relatively poor family out West, her parents had worked around and for a large farming concern and had scraped together enough to send Carmen to college. But it weighed on her heavily, the cost of that college.
It happened one night when he wasn’t paying attention. The sunset was especially beautiful and after most of the people had left the beach, he and Carmen were still standing there looking at where the sun had been. The glow had long faded, and the shadows of early evening had covered everything, turning it a light gray, purple color. When the stars started to come out, he watched the angle of her neck and the way her eyes sparkled in the darkness and it seemed so natural to reach over, take her in his arms and kiss her. She didn’t fight him, but she was nervous because he felt her shake. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, but he did.
One thing led to another and he whispered in her ear that he’d like to take her to his house and would she, please?
She said yes.
That night, they breached the chasm of their two worlds in one of the most beautiful lovemaking sessions he’d ever had. It left him drunk with lust, craving for more. He didn’t even realize until later when she told him that he had been her first.
She let her house go and stayed with him until the 1st of February. They had always talked about the fact that Carmen would go back to California and he would return to New York. They talked about how maybe someday they’d come back to Sunset Beach and spend another week or two or a couple of months there together again, and they promised to stay in touch. He said he’d write her letters and took her address. She promised to answer his letters and to buy his new book when it came out.
But as the weeks went by, the book that Hank wrote become a bestseller and he became involved in the promotion, the book tours, the signings and the publicity. He intended to write her, and then he caught himself thinking that perhaps she was better off without him. The age difference didn’t matter in the bedroom between them. But he’d had a life and he was going to have to deal with the mistakes of his past. He had girls that were ten years younger than she was. He was a responsible father, businessman, and he belonged where he had grown up in New York City. Carmen had her whole life ahead of her and Hank didn’t want to take that life like he’d taken her virginity.
It wasn’t until many years later that they met again.
And then, they were inseparable.
Chapter 2
Christmas Eve Day 2020
Wedding Day
Andy Carr woke up in the guest bedroom, upstairs, because Aimee had invited several of her girlfriends to spend the night and he knew what their chitchat would do to his sleep pattern.
Today was the wedding day. The date had been postponed twice, both times due to his deployment schedule. But he was now officially detached from SEAL Team 3, ready to report to his Team 4 group at Little Creek in five days. It didn’t leave much time for a honeymoon, so, like the wedding itself, they postponed that too.
Last night, he’d given Aimee a gentle peck on the cheek, knew that chances for one last encounter before the big day, while the
y were both single, was out of the question. She was buried in gifts and her girlfriends spread over their king-sized bed. He didn’t begrudge their getting caught up. A couple of them had come a great distance to be there for her.
Eventually the magpie voices stopped, and he fell blissfully asleep, the caressing sounds of the sea in the distance. It was still there in the morning.
But this morning things were happening downstairs in the kitchen. He’d been told the caterers were coming early. The big day was upon them.
He pushed open the master bedroom door and found their vacant bed, still scattered with opened presents and remnants of wrapping paper and bows. With a glance to their closet, he noticed Aimee’s green running shoes were gone and that’s when he saw her leading a pack of ladies running down the beach. Even as they ran, they chattered, sparking and delighting everyone they passed by, as if the whole beach was celebrating too.
The house was half-painted on the inside. Although they’d tried to finish everything beforehand, only half the walls were covered in sheetrock. During the remodeling, they’d discovered more than the usual defects in plumbing and long-neglected air conditioning and electrical lines. Then it needed a new roof after the big storm earlier this fall, which took an unexpected chunk out of their savings since the roof had to be tied down and applied to hurricane standards. Every window, due to the storm ratings, cost three times what a normal window would cost elsewhere.
But it was their house, with creative touches and brightly colored furniture pieces they’d purchased second-hand and customized to their beach theme. Just about the only thing they didn’t change was the color on the outside: passionate Chinese red, as Aimee called it. That had been close to the color when Aimee first spotted it a year ago.
The House At Sunset: SEALed At Sunset - The Beach Renovation (Sunset SEALs Book 5) Page 2